


post-script

by Feather (lalaietha)



Series: (even if i could) make a deal with god [your blue-eyed boys related short-fic] [43]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bad Days, Disabled Character, Just Add Kittens, M/M, Mentally Ill Character, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, Recovery isn't linear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-30
Updated: 2014-08-30
Packaged: 2018-02-15 11:06:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2226765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lalaietha/pseuds/Feather
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve's putting some of the knives he tidied away when Mercedes was coming up back where they live when he looks up because the balcony door opens and shuts again, leaves Bucky on the mat in front of it. He's obviously been out in the rain; he rakes his hair back from his face with one hand and then meets Steve's eyes, briefly, with a grimace before he leans down to undo his boots and get rid of them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	post-script

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is part of [**this series**](http://archiveofourown.org/series/132585), which is for short-fic associated with my fic [**your blue-eyed boys**](http://archiveofourown.org/series/107477), because I needed somewhere to stash it. This one was on a Hurt/Comfort Bingo prompt: "disappearing"

The rain doesn't look like it has any intention of stopping, falls almost like it's trying to attack the ground. It's kind of a shame, because Steve's mood doesn't need any help, especially since he let the kid back into her place. For a while he stares out of the living-room window, down to the street, watching the flash and impact of drops on concrete, asphalt, trees, bushes and grass. 

He's not thinking about anything in particular. He has thoughts, but they sort of well up in his head and then disperse without him doing anything in particular. Like how it's strange to _know_ he doesn't have to worry about a leaking roof, even on the top floor of a building, because even if something does leak he can just call someone and have it fixed without having to think about it. Like how they're not going to have to worry about heat even once this winter. Like how in January he'll still be able to buy pears. 

Then after a bit he shakes himself, mentally. He gathers up the dishes from his and Mercedes' snack and puts them in the dishwasher, except for his coffee mug; he refills that and sticks it in the microwave. 

Speaking of things that are strange, if he lets himself think about them. 

He tosses the lychee skins and the ends of the starfruit into the compost and puts the cream and the chocolate away. _That_ was a trick Jane had showed him and it did actually make the best hot chocolate in the world, if you just melted some really high quality chocolate and stirred in heavy cream until it was smooth, mix it all with hot milk. And the kid had needed something good. 

Funny how some things didn't change. Or if they did a little, they still fell in the same shapes - back when, Jaime would already be dead and his family'd probably never even know why, but on the other hand, back then . . . well, you got Steve, as he had been. 

Sometimes the biggest strangeness is thinking that now . . .Now everything that made life _then_ a tightrope walk over sharpened stakes can be treated, some of it even cured; that if it couldn't be cured, like the asthma, it could be made so it was only a part of the background, not something that threatened to kill him on a regular basis. 

Now it's the kids who were too sick to have survived back then who limp along, and their families who try to keep their heads above water. And Steve can never figure out what kind of thought that is, if it's a hopeful one or a depressing one or what. Just that even with the vast, incredible change, there's still that underneath.

But it doesn't take much to understand why what Mercedes wants most is to make it so there's nowhere in the city she can't run. 

Steve shakes that off, too. It's not helping. When he leaves the kitchen the kitten wakes up and stretches and jumps down from her cat-tree, taking a flying leap onto the futon and sticking like velcro as she decides to investigate what's behind it, or at least what can be seen from the back. 

Steve turns on the radio and flips through it until he finds a program about jazz, he thinks broadcasting from Canada's public radio. Then he actually gathers up the rest of the laundry and throws it in the machine, because while the claim to Mercedes that he had a load about to go in had been a fib, it was only because he hasn't actually got everything together and paid attention. He strips the bed and puts new sheets on, and gathers up towels and cloths from around the condo and leaves them in a pile, waiting to go in. 

He hesitates over going back to the book, and then marks his place and closes it, leaves it on the side-table. 

The radio program is nice, even if he's only kind of listening. Steve likes that jazz didn't _stop_ just because it wasn't new anymore, wasn't the centre of everything; he can't really follow all the new stuff, is pretty sure you need to know a lot more about the basic structure of music than he does for it to make sense, but even when it doesn't really hit his ears as music he likes listening. 

He likes that it's still alive, still growing. 

Steve's putting some of the knives he tidied away when Mercedes was coming up back where they live when he looks up because the balcony door opens and shuts again, leaves Bucky on the mat in front of it. He's obviously been out in the rain; he rakes his hair back from his face with one hand and then meets Steve's eyes, briefly, with a grimace before he leans down to undo his boots and get rid of them. 

And he is _soaking_ wet, and Steve says, almost a little bemused, "You've gotta be freezing," because the part of him that wants to ask whether or not Bucky's trying to kill himself with the flu stalls out twice, once over the fact that neither of them ever gets sick, and then twice over the part where - as Steve now knows - that's not how you get the flu anyway. 

"I am," Bucky says, glancing down at himself with a distant kind of disgust. He looks up, meets Steve's eyes again for a second and then gives his low-armed shrug, silently saying, _yeah, I just spent however long in the freezing rain and now I'm wet and cold, just like I hate being, I don't know, I've got nothing._ It's the look that says whatever it is he just did was only his idea insofar as it did actually come out of his brain - just, somewhere in the dark, fucked up crazy parts he doesn't know what to do with. 

Steve shakes his head, feeling his mouth curve up a bit, and goes to get a towel, tosses it at Bucky who starts by stripping the soaking shirt off and dropping it in a wet heap with another disgusted look. The jeans aren't quite as bad - denim doesn't soak up so much water. Now that he's inside skin that had been pale with cold starts going red in patches, as blood vessels start noticing the air around them's warm and rush blood back to places that'd been cut off. 

Steve half-sits on the table and watches. 

"The kid's got her bag back," Bucky says, without inflection and not meeting Steve's gaze as he dries off the top half of himself. "Or she will whenever she looks outside her door, anyway. And the MTA has shit for security." He sighs and adds, "And I'm sorry." 

"It's okay - " Steve starts, distracted from the momentary desire to laugh about good Samaritan break-ins, but Bucky pitches the towel at the floor hard. 

"No, for fuck's sake Steve, it's not okay," he snaps. "It's not - " he lifts on hand and then drops it and shakes his head. "It's not okay," he repeats, quieter, looking up. "And you know it." 

As Bucky starts to go to pick the towel back up, Steve catches his right forearm and pulls him closer instead, until he can put his arms around Bucky's waist and rest there one hand on top of the other, until he can lean his head on Bucky's shoulder. It's an impulse - he's not even sure it's an argument, a counter-point to what Bucky said, so much as just right then the last thing _Steve_ wants is Bucky stalking off to get changed angry with himself. So Steve'll stop it if he can.

Bucky's skin's cool to the touch and his jeans are more than wet enough to start the rainwater soaking into Steve's, at his hip and the inside of his thighs. Bucky slides his right hand up Steve's neck, threading fingers through his hair and keeping them there, forearm on Steve's left shoulder and left hand resting on the right, metal colder than Bucky's skin. 

"Fine," Steve says quietly. "It's not your _fault_." Because that he can argue, _that_ ground he can hold; the other one . . . the other one he might have to cede, for the way that even though he knows better any time Bucky disappears the yawning echo of two years and then how many months opens up inside Steve's chest. He might have to cede that. He might have to admit it's not okay.

But the other, never. And it doesn't matter, Bucky's back now, here, skin against Steve's arms forehead and heartbeat somewhere underneath the bone skin stretches over, and that's what matters. 

Bucky rests his head against Steve's and doesn't answer. They stay like that for a moment, before Steve has to ask, "You broke into the MTA lost and found?" 

Bucky's huff of a sort-of-laugh brushes against Steve's hair. "I heard the kid on the intercom. I was on the roof. I figured trying to find the fucking thing was a better waste of time than sitting up there being cold and angry at myself." Another, smaller huff of laughter and he adds, "Then I had to find somewhere to stand out of the way and out of sight until I stopped fucking dripping. Pick the lock to her place?" 

"After she dried off and stopped looking quite so much like a beat-up puppy, yeah," Steve says, turning his head a little, settling it against Bucky's collar-bone for a moment before he shifts his hands to Bucky's waist and straightens up. "You should finish changing," he says. "Then you should eat something." 

"I fucking knew you were going to say that," Bucky says, but it's resignation, not argument. "Fine. I'll eat something. Then we can fucking watch something until I remember what warm is." 

And like she finally noticed the other voice in the place, there's a sudden trilling mew with an abrupt hiccup as the kitten jumps down from her spot beside the bear and scampers across the floor to start climbing Bucky's jeans and, when she gets there, more carefully pawing at his left arm until her little claws find the spaces between moveable metal to dig in and climb all the way to his shoulder. 

With little kitten wails the whole way. 

"Yeah, okay, I get it," Bucky says, as she settles on his shoulder, grooms her paw and then licks his face. "Christ, cat." 

"Two days left to name her before I do," Steve says, blandly. Bucky shoots him an aggravated look. 

Steve laughs at him.


End file.
